Asian Travel Adventures: Beijing Adventures

Remember when I said that I wore everyday summer clothing underneath my trench coat and skirts plus non-thermal tights in Beijing? It really worked for me. I felt a little cold sometimes but it was tolerable. So, on our 4th day, I decided to ditch the trench, just like what I did on the 3rd day, and I used a heavy cardigan instead Upon stepping a foot out of our hotel, my other foot quickly turned around, dragging me back inside. It was freaking cold! The winds were having quite a party...it was so windy and so damn cold! So, we all went back to our room and added some more layers. I had no thermals so I put on my trench instead, again. Problem solved.

Finding the Old Summer Palace was a cinch - we hailed a cab, that's why. There's a subway stop at Yuanmingyuan but taking a cab is more comfortable. Ha! The cabbie was polite and he would point to us landmarks we passed by, probably because he knew we were tourists. He pointed to us hutongs being demolished, the Peking University, yup, in English, and Tsinghua University, among others. He gave us a printed receipt showing the date, time, duration and cost of travel, like all the other cabs we've ridden in Beijing.

So, we've reached a gate of the Old Summer Palace. We bought the costliest tickets so we could see the ruins and everything else. Most of the visitors bought the cheapest ones, though. You can buy tickets per section, too. Anyway, I don't know which gate we entered but it was near the subway exit and the Visitor's Center.

We went inside and I started feeling giddy. We were in a very historic site, and a shadow of regret came upon me. How could the invaders destroy the Palace? Ah, when you go there you'd see for yourself traces of its former splendor; its beauty, however, remains intact. The gardens are vast and walking along the lake, on a very cold day with trees swaying in the air and water gently lapping, you'd wish that you're with someone you love. It is also a perfect place to meditate, weave dreams, or cry you heart out; the beauty of your surroundings would surely lift your spirit. Yuanmingyuan is actually kinda romantic, I think. If you can withstand the cold.

Victor Hugo had his view known about the looting and destruction of Yuanmingyuan:

The sack of the Summer Palace

To Captain Butler
Hauteville House,

25 November, 1861

You ask my opinion, Sir, about the China expedition. You consider this expedition to be honourable and glorious, and you have the kindness to attach some consideration to my feelings; according to you, the China expedition, carried out jointly under the flags of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon, is a glory to be shared between France and England, and you wish to know how much approval I feel I can give to this English and French victory.

Since you wish to know my opinion, here it is:

There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace. Art has two principles, the Idea, which produces European art, and the Chimera, which produces oriental art. The Summer Palace was to chimerical art what the Parthenon is to ideal art. All that can be begotten of the imagination of an almost extra-human people was there. It was not a single, unique work like the Parthenon. It was a kind of enormous model of the chimera, if the chimera can have a model. Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks, suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building. The slow work of generations had been necessary to create it. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the peoples. For the work of time belongs to man. Artists, poets and philosophers knew the Summer Palace; Voltaire talks of it. People spoke of the Parthenon in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, the Summer Palace in the Orient. If people did not see it they imagined it. It was a kind of tremendous unknown masterpiece, glimpsed from the distance in a kind of twilight, like a silhouette of the civilization of Asia on the horizon of the civilization of Europe.

This wonder has disappeared.

One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned. Victory can be a thieving woman, or so it seems. The devastation of the Summer Palace was accomplished by the two victors acting jointly. Mixed up in all this is the name of Elgin, which inevitably calls to mind the Parthenon. What was done to the Parthenon was done to the Summer Palace, more thoroughly and better, so that nothing of it should be left. All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry. What a great exploit, what a windfall! One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits.

We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to barbarism.

Before history, one of the two bandits will be called France; the other will be called England. But I protest, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity! the crimes of those who lead are not the fault of those who are led; Governments are sometimes bandits, peoples never.

The French empire has pocketed half of this victory, and today with a kind of proprietorial naivety it displays the splendid bric-a-brac of the Summer Palace. I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China.

Meanwhile, there is a theft and two thieves.

I take note.

This, Sir, is how much approval I give to the China expedition.